Another IndiGo Radome Splits After a Normal Lucknow Landing

An IndiGo Airbus A320-251N landed eight minutes early at Lucknow on October 7 with a smashed nose cone and 110 people unhurt. Flight 6E925 had come in from Patna. Airport staff found the dent after the jet parked, then declared it Aircraft on Ground.

The airline pointed to hail on landing. Airport crews are also examining a lightning strike. The photographs look like a mid-air scare. The landing was ordinary, and this is not IndiGo’s first weather-split radome.

What Happened on IndiGo Flight 6E925

Flight 6E925 left Patna at 3.10 pm with 104 passengers and six crew. It was due at Chaudhary Charan Singh International Airport at 4.12 pm and touched down at 4.04 pm. An airport official said the arrival was a normal landing, with no injuries and no emergency declared.

Airport sources said the crew told air traffic they thought the jet had taken a strike near 17,000 feet, and that they could not see how bad it was from the cockpit. The Airbus A320-251N, registration VT-IQZ, vacated the runway, parked at its bay, and only then showed a crushed nose. The damage sat on the radome, the cone that covers the weather radar.

THE PATNA TO LUCKNOW CLOCK

1. October 7, 2026, 3.10 pm: 6E925 departs Patna for Lucknow.
2. October 7, about 17,000 feet: Crew reports a suspected strike to air traffic as a precaution.
3. October 7, 4.04 pm: Jet lands at Lucknow, eight minutes ahead of the 4.12 pm schedule.
4. October 7, after parking: Ground staff see the crushed radome and IndiGo declares Aircraft on Ground.
5. October 7, 5.05 pm: Planned 6E6968 Lucknow-Ahmedabad does not go with VT-IQZ.
6. October 7, 6.22 pm: A replacement aircraft leaves for Ahmedabad with the onward passengers.

Engineers stayed with the cone at Lucknow. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation was told under standard procedure, and the jet is not to leave until it has the watchdog’s clearance.

IndiGo Named Hail, Airport Crews Named Lightning

By the night of October 7 the public story was a lightning hit at 17,000 feet. IndiGo’s own wording was narrower. A spokesperson said the Patna-Lucknow flight on 7 October 2026 met unfavourable weather, including a hailstorm while landing, and that this damaged the radome.

The aircraft landed safely, and all customers disembarked at their destination, i.e. Chaudhary Charan Singh International Airport, Lucknow. The relevant authorities were immediately informed. The aircraft will undergo necessary maintenance and will resume operations after securing relevant clearances.

IndiGo spokesperson, October 7 statement

An airport official, speaking with preliminary notes, said teams were examining the chance the jet had met lightning in bad weather. Those are two weather claims, not one finding. Hail and lightning often travel in the same cell, and a radome can take both. The inspection is meant to sort the dent, the radar, and the wiring before anyone calls a cause.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The arrival: VT-IQZ landed normally at 4.04 pm with 110 people unhurt.
• The part: Visible damage was confined to the nose radome after the jet reached its bay.
• The airline line: IndiGo named unfavourable weather, including a hailstorm on landing.
• The next sector: Lucknow-Ahmedabad 6E6968 did not use this airframe; a replacement left at 6.22 pm.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The strike: A lightning hit at 17,000 feet is still under examination, not a closed finding.
• The mix: How much of the crush came from hail, from lightning, or from both has not been published.
• The return: No date has been given for DGCA clearance or for VT-IQZ to leave Lucknow.

Viral clips talked as if the front of the jet had been destroyed and as if the arrival were an emergency. The clock does not match that. The pilots landed early, parked, and learned the extent of the dent from the ground. The sharper question is whether the cell was one they could have stayed out of, which is the question the regulator already asked after a similar crushed nose in 2025.

Why the Nose Cone Takes the Hit

A radome is a weatherproof cone over the weather radar. It has to let radio energy through, so it is built from fiberglass or similar non-metal, not from the aluminium skin of the rest of the nose. That makes it the first thing a bolt or a hail core meets, and the part most likely to look wrecked after a storm while the cabin behind it stays intact.

US transport-category rules say the airplane must be protected against catastrophic effects from lightning. For a non-metal cone, that usually means diverter strips, often copper, that take current off the radar and back into the airframe. The cone can still pit, burn, or crush. The design goal is that the radar and the people behind it do not.

Weather nose radomes sit in the Zone 1A radome attachment zone, the first-hit region at the extremities. Parts in that zone are tested to a 200,000-amp strike, the industry’s stand-in for a severe flash. Smaller hits are far more common, and they add up as pits in the paint and the anti-static coat.

LIGHTNING ZONES ON A JET

• Zone 1: Nose, wing tips, and tail tips, tested to 200,000 amps as the first attachment.
• Zone 2: Swept-stroke skin along the fuselage and parts of the wing, tested to 100,000 amps.
• Zone 3: Areas lightning is unlikely to hit directly, still checked to 40,000 amps for current that has to pass through.

None of that makes a crushed cone trivial for an airline. A radome that is cracked or burned can no longer be trusted as a radar cover, so the jet stays down until the cone is repaired or swapped and the systems behind it are checked. On October 7 that check began at a station that is not one of IndiGo’s heavy bases, which is why the next rotation moved to another airframe instead of waiting on VT-IQZ.

Hail Already Split an IndiGo Nose in Srinagar

On May 21, 2025, IndiGo A321neo VT-IMD, operating 6E-2142 from Delhi to Srinagar, flew into hail and severe turbulence near Pathankot at FL360. After landing, a walk-around found the nose radome damaged. No one on board was hurt. That event was not a quiet early arrival. The crew declared PAN PAN, flew the jet by hand through the cell, and later told the regulator they had been refused deviations toward the border and into Lahore airspace before they went through the weather.

Murlidhar Mohol, minister of state for civil aviation, told the Rajya Sabha on August 11, 2025, what the Directorate General of Civil Aviation had found. Severe weather on the route and “non-timely action in re-routing the aircraft clear of weather” were the probable causes, he said in a written reply. Lucknow is a different phase of flight and a different jet. It is the same part of the airplane, found ugly after a storm, on the same airline.

TWO INDIGO RADOMES, TWO STORMS

The Srinagar file is closed enough to quote. The Lucknow file is not. Treating them as the same mistake would get ahead of the inspection. Treating them as unrelated would ignore that IndiGo has now had two radomes opened by hail or lightning on Airbus-family jets, both discovered after landing, both sent to the same regulator.

The Ahmedabad Leg Left Without VT-IQZ

The same airframe was booked to fly 6E6968 from Lucknow to Ahmedabad at 5.05 pm. Once the cone was found, that sector could not use VT-IQZ. IndiGo put the onward passengers on another aircraft, which left at 6.22 pm, one hour and 17 minutes after the original slot. That is the operational bill of a radome event: not a cabin full of injuries, a hole in the afternoon bank and a jet stuck at a station that has to wait on parts, engineers, and a signature.

Aircraft on Ground is a maintenance status, not a scare headline. It means the airplane does not take another passenger load until the defect is cleared. For a low-cost carrier that turns narrowbodies hard, one A320 sitting at Lucknow overnight is a rotation problem before it is a public-relations problem. The Patna-Lucknow load got where it was going. The Ahmedabad load waited on a spare.

Lucknow is a busy IndiGo city station, not a heavy check base. A radome swap can be a known job if the spare cone and the paperwork are there. If they are not, the airframe waits. Nothing public on October 8 said which of those two paths VT-IQZ was on, only that it stays until the inspection and the clearance are done.

Airliners Take Lightning About Once a Year

A transport jet is built as a Faraday cage. Current wants the skin, not the cabin. Certification still assumes the airplane will be hit, because it will. Safety researchers put the typical rate at about one strike a year for a commercial airliner, and most of those hits leave little more than a burn mark on a rivet or a pit on a cone.

The FAA lightning protection handbook is the long-form guide manufacturers use to design for those hits and to test the airframe and its systems. The related lightning test waveforms standard sets the currents and voltages labs fire at parts, including Zone 1 cones. The Lucknow photographs are what a pass can still look like: the people walk off, the radar cover does not.

THE LUCKNOW LOAD IN FIGURES

• On board: 104 passengers and six crew, 110 people, no injuries reported.
• The miss on the clock: Eight minutes early, 4.04 pm against a 4.12 pm schedule.
• The altitude named: About 17,000 feet, from airport sources, still tied to a suspected strike.
• The design hit: A Zone 1A radome is tested to a 200,000-amp flash.

That once-a-year average is a fleet statistic, not a promise that any given monsoon cell will be kind. Indian domestic tracks in October still throw hail cores and lightning on short hops. A 54-minute Patna-Lucknow sector does not give a crew a long menu of diversions. It does still require a weather decision on the descent, which is the part of the Srinagar file the minister put on the record, and the part this probe will have to read again.

DGCA Opens Another Weather File

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation has opened a probe. The aircraft remains at Lucknow for technical inspection and will return to service only after maintenance and regulatory clearance. IndiGo said authorities were informed at once. Further technical detail, a person familiar with the process said, waits on that inspection.

The file will have to hold both weather stories. Pilots reported a strike. The airline named hail on landing. Ground staff found a cone that had already done the job the rules assign it, ugly and still attached, with the radar housing behind it and 110 people walking off on time. Whether the cell should have been flown around is the question that turned Srinagar from a damaged radome into a finding about rerouting. It is the question worth asking here, and it is not answered on October 8.

Engineers were on the cone the afternoon it landed. VT-IQZ leaves Lucknow when the watchdog signs, and not before.